Ján Kuciak

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On February 25, 2018, Slovak investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his girlfriend, MartinaKušnířova were found shot to death in his house in Velká Mača, some 5 kilometers from capital Bratislava, Slovakia, localmediareported.

The journalist was shot in the chest with a single bullet, and his partner in the head, according toreports.

Police chief Tibor Gašpar said that the murders were "most likely" linked to the work of the journalist, Reuters reported.

Kuciak worked for the news website Aktuality, where he investigated tax fraud associated with individuals close to the ruling social democratic party Smer, according to Reuters.

Before his death, Kuciak had worked with the Sarajevo-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Aktuality on an investigation into an Italian mafia group, ‘Ndragheta, and their incursions into Slovakia, the OCCRP said in a statement.

At the time of his death, the journalist was collecting records on men considered by Italian police to be extremely dangerous, the OCCRP stated. The OCCRP has since published the uncompleted version of Kuciak’s article, which alleged embezzlement of EU funds.

Police in Slovakia said March 1 that they had detained three businessmen named in the report, The Washington Postreported.

Separately, the journalist’s last story for Aktuality, on February 9, looked at suspected tax fraud linked to a luxury apartment complex in Bratislava, Reuters reported. Kuciak had previously reported to police that he had received threats last year from Marian Kocner, a businessperson about whom Kuciak had written, according to The Associated Press. “It has been 44 days since I filed a criminal complaint…for the threats. And the case probably does not even have a particular cop,” the journalist wrote on his Facebook page in October 2017, according to the Guardian.

Kocner previously stated he would set up a website publishing information on the private lives of journalists reporting on the alleged tax fraud case against him, the newspaper reported. Slovakia’s National Criminal Agency (NAKA) has since dropped the fraud case. Kocner did not immediately comment on Kuciak and Kušnířova’s murders, the Guardian stated.